


Mitochondria

by Sherb42



Series: Star Trek: Migaloo [2]
Category: Original Work, Star Trek
Genre: First Contact, Other, Star Trek OCs, Star Trek: Migaloo, cleaning products to the rescue
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:08:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23962084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sherb42/pseuds/Sherb42
Summary: While taking a shortcut through a nebular that has a reputation for being a bit of a ‘ship graveyard,’ the USS Migaloo makes accidental first contact with a race of war-like, single-celled aliens evolved from the common flu that had just entered their first age of exploration.---Episode 2 of Star Trek: Migaloo.The misadventures of an understaffed and underfunded Federation cargo ship as they move cargo, people, and other oddities around the universe and deal with whatever problems-of-the-week that come up while doing so.
Series: Star Trek: Migaloo [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1496288
Comments: 8
Kudos: 8





	1. Shortcuts

**Author's Note:**

> This has been my planned episode 2 since like mid-2019. If I had known that there was going to be an actual plague at the same time that I would be writing it I would have changed the villains. I mean, I’m still not going to, I like them and I’ve put a lot of work into them all already. 
> 
> You don’t have to have read the first episode before this, but it helps to better flesh out who everybody on the ship is.

Our next story will be taking place primarily in a place known as the Kayton nebular, it’s current name taken from a pet of one of the first modern astronomers to take good photos of it.

Millions of years ago, although still looking almost exactly the same nebular as it is now, it used to be used as a space ship highway full of the hustle and bustle of the people who existed back then. Most of those people looking almost laughably like humans with a bit of makeup slapped on their cheeks, but that’s a problem for the makeup department to figure out. Cruise ships especially loved the place because of how pretty it was on the inside. Colourful oranges, pinks, and plasma storms off in the distance, you could take photos of it for a lifetime and never end up with duplicates. The place had a long history.

One day one of these fancy cruise ships didn’t make it back. An epidemic had wiped out all of it’s passenger and crew leaving them all dead within the hour. The ship was left abandoned drifting in the deep of the nebular, and there was no reason to spend the time and energy to get out. Even if they did, there wasn’t much you could have done with it.

Over the years, more ships ended up joining it. More ships that fell the same fate, ruins of wars fought between long-gone lost Empires and Federations, pirates who bit off more than they could chew, or even explorers who let their curiosity get the best of them. If all of this had been on a planet those ships would have been covered by sand or plants by now, but since it was in the vacuum of space it all got left as it had arrived. A nebular once known for its wonder was now known as being an old ship graveyard.

The people who had died there were all gone, and others took their cosmic place. More explored, more died, all the while as their ships and planets faded away form both memory and existence from time alone.

By the time we come to the setting of this story, it’s been an awfully long time since anybody has seen the old place of much value other than a borderline and shortcut, if you’re able to get permission to use it as one that is. Pirates raid what’s left, science vessels come and go to take some readings, it’s all about one big discovery away from people wanting to fight for it again.

That discovery would come very soon. 

You see, that epidemic that had taken that old cruise ship had killed all of it’s passengers, sure, but the virus still remained and survived, and in one form or another is still around today.

Although, instead of still being a simple raspatory infection, it was more of a human-like design with a culture that instead of absorbing and killing it’s competition, killed them with guns instead. Their ‘planet’ was deep in the Katon Nebular and consisted of hundreds of city-sized and long-abandoned space ships that had drifted towards it from simple gravity.

The Sapieocyte, although not the smartest things out there, weren’t something that you messed with. Warlike and self-replicating every couple of years, they had taken over the Kayton Nebular much like other humanoids had done with each of their own planets. They were loyal and hard-working on the virtual that it was their job.

They had a humanoid form in the form of two sturdy legs, a thick tail, arms that went down to their hips, a semi-transparent body with a very thick lipid cell wall surrounding that acted as both as their exoskeleton and a natural Armor. Photoreceptors acting like little unblinking dot-eyes in their head and a mouth that was only used to take in nutrenace and to speak with. They had gill-like pores on their cheeks and above where the collarbone would (if they had bones) be that filted in and out gasses – largely hydrogen and Ca2. They all had rows of soft ‘spikes’ made of thicker cell walls going from the top of their heads (sometimes looking like short hair) all the way down their tails and with slightly thicker patches on their joints.

Their hands usually only had a thumb and a larger digit, but it was effortless to split it into fingers, or the whole arm into a second. Their closest living relative would be the modern-day flu, and although they could no longer really be classified as a virus, still acted like it in many ways. 

The Sapieoctyes had evolved to live within it and to survive in the nebular, and were extremely close to leaving it to take on what else was out there. They were not exactly warped capable in the traditional sense - their societal development could be better explained as ‘Earth English during the 17th century, but in space with better guns and without all the silly hats.’

Unfortunately for our heroes, but fortunately for me since it makes for a good story, the United Federation of planets had no idea that the Sapieocytes had been out there the whole time. It wasn’t _really_ their fault, all that their long-range scanners had only seen proto-influenza deep into the nebular, and that was never seen to be worth a massive investigation. Plenty of simple life like that was around, it was normal. There wasn’t even any way that a humanoid species could realistically live in there.

Right?

* * *

* * *

The present-day part of this particular story can begin down at one of the Migaloo cargo bays, and so it will.

“It is quite incredible,” Ruh’k said as he watched his commanding officer sit on, and then lie on a pile of cardboard boxes that where due to go god-knows-where, “My best chance in becoming a proper commander any time soon is being foiled by a man lying with his shirt half undone and his legs up on a luggage conveyer belt,” He didn’t sound very impressed by the situation, but he wasn’t surprised. Lut. Commander Ruh’k was half Klingon (on his mothers’) and half Vulcan (his father’s), and how the hell he had lived past infancy was a guess to anybody who tried to figure it out. His old doctor still was trying too. He was quite a grouch when he wanted too be. 

“You know you love me,” Commander Phoenix said as he rolled past Ruh’k station, his head resting on his hands by his back. Phoenix was a Lu’Mar, a humanoid race that looked enough like a human from the outside that the extra details didn’t quite matter. He had an electronic tab under his right eye and other patches of computer implants on the nape of his neck and parts of his right arm. Sometimes he told people that he was also an XB to get them to stop talking to him.

Ruh’k adverted his eyes it happened with a roll. This was supposed to be just a simple inventory check. “Unorganized humanoid smuggling will result in all parties spending the duration of the trip in the brig. If you go through the secondary scan as you are you will be transported there directly and I am under Starfleet regulations to not let you out,” his first officer cited.

Phoenix rolled off the belt with little to no grace just before he got to a scanner.

“Are you quite done?”

The commander fixed his uniform with little pats to his side and then fixed up the knot holding his bushy hair back. “Yeah, that’s fair, actually.”

Ruh’k sighed and then pulled out a foldable PADD from one of the pocks on the inside of his jacket, a holographic screen popping up before him. “Well, you go have fun on the parcel conveyer belt, I have actual work to get too.”

* * *

If you are at all familiar with any of my other works, and thank you if you are that really does mean a lot to me, you make have already heard of a lesser-known (both in our world and in the story, the former because I was the one to make them up,) race called the Altaki.

Their most notable physical difference from the normal ‘human’ model was that their eyes and mouths closed sideways instead of the more regular ‘up and down.’ They had a layer of thin Lanugo fur all over their body that was usually a shade of tan or brown, long pinky fingers that where a leftover from bat-like ancestors instead of monkey-like animals, and long thin tails with cartilage spines on the end that often come up like a scorpion as reflect with startled: fight, flight, freeze, or just outright stab them instead. Their hair was very thick and ringed together ealisely, and cutting hair wasn’t a common thing in the culture. With how slow it grew it was seen as a status symbol to have a display it. Not dreadlocks exactly, but worn the same. Their hair was considered the same layer as the rest of their fur.

Altaki had no visible ears, instead just having small holes at the side of their heads like some races of Klingon or Gorn. They ate a diet of mostly fungi and meat.

Now, what was most remarkable about this species was their ability to be ignored. They had evolved to be as hard to remember as possible, not to wipe your memory of themselves, but work like a natural clipboard and fluro vest. If you saw somebody break into a house with a fluro vest on would you think much of it? Not likely. They’re in a fluro vest! They must have a reason to go looking around the house for an open window. Or when a car alarm goes off, how many times have you see that happen and it had actually been a robber?

Exactly. A hardhat onto a worksite, a camera into an event, a ladder, well, anywhere, it was actually really effective.

In given the choice between ‘not being seen by blending into the environment’ and ‘just slipping out of a praetor’s mind’ the life on their home planet chose the latter. The effect is phenomenal, but can be suppressed with the aids of the right medication.

Part of why I’m telling you all of this now instead of a story that’s about them is that T’Mau’s roommate was one of them. Another young Ensign by the name of Calmyu Togai. Her family name came first.

Calmyu had been on the ship for a little while already when T’Mau had joined, and slept on the bunk above him. More than once already T’Mau has woken up to her tail dangling dangerously close to his face, but she was working on keeping it around her legs while she slept. Both of them where in command red, but you could usually tell who’s stuff was who’s based on how neatly it had been kept.

She was shorter than T’Mau and liked to listen to music and other entertainment without headphones. She kept her hair loosely tied behind her neck and it went to about the middle of her chest in length. Her hair was decorated with rings of common gold – a practice that was as common as a human getting their earlobes pierced. She often alternated between either the pants or the skirt with the deciding factors being if she was to be doing a lot of desk work that shift and how much she could be bothered dressing around her tail that day.

Calmyu wasn’t some whizz kid destine for greatness, but she didn’t need to be. In Starfleet she was working to a simple carrier goal: She was going to be the first Altakin Starfleet captain. Thankfully for her, there had been hardly any Altakin admission so far so her competition was limited, but Calmyu still had quite a lot of work to go.

“Is this your undershirt, or mine?” T’Mau asked the officer on the top bunk in the corner of his room, holding a shirt that had been left on the edge of a desk in his hand. T'Mau was a young Vulcan man who was still new enough to this whole 'Ensign' thing to care who's undershirt was whos. The undershirt for their uniform was a soft black fabric not too dissimilar to a sports jersey in material, with a part at the top that came together around where the collarbone sat on species that had collarbones that poked out from under the top half. Every ship had an additional style one could wear if they wanted that had a design that was custom to it. More wore their undershirts as part of their casual wear. 

The one for the Migaloo was black at the top and then faded into your division style starting at the middle. The design was on the right side and made with some white lines and a lot of little dots, with ‘Migaloo’ written in a few different scripts along one of the lines on the outside with negative space. The design wrapped around and was not visible when your uniform’s blazer was over it. Somebody who knows more about art, like Ruh’k, for example, might have described the design as being ‘Australian’ in aesthetic.

Both T’Mau and Calmyu usually wore that style of undershirt.

Ensign Calmyu looked up from the PADD that she had been watching a sporting match on. “Uhhhhh,” she said, looking at the shirt, “What’s the difference?” Because of how her teeth worked she sounded a little like she had a ‘New Jersey’ accent.

“The difference is that one is my shirt and the other is not,” T’Mau said straight before sniffing the shirt. It was perfectly clean. Who cleans a uniform and just leaves it out? Was it new? Did he just forget that he had taken out? T’Mau put the shirt on.

“They’re the same size,” Calmyu said with a shrug.

“Our shirts are fitted.”

“ _We’re_ the same size.”

T’Mau looked back up at her. “I’m taller than you.”

“Yeah, but you’re way skinnier,” Calmyu commented. 

T’Mau picked up his blazer and looked at his frame before and after putting it on. T’Mau wouldn’t exactly call himself ‘skinny,’ but he was still quite lean. Nothing wrong with that.

“It’s the padding that helps,” she commented with a shrug, “It’s easy to tell that it’s there on you.”

T’Mau wasn’t if that was a compliment or not. “It’s not padded.”

“In the shoulders, it is. They all are like that,” Calmyu rolled over onto her back, looking up at the poster that she had taped onto the wall. “And anyway, it’s like two hours before your shift, why are you getting dressed now?”

“It does not hurt to be in uniform.”

“I get that but like, you’re _always_ in uniform. You’re allowed to be in other things, yaknow.”

“Like yours?” T’Mau said, looking at her through the mirror. The door chimed. “Enter,” He said, pinning his combage on his breast with a tiny beep.

Lieutenant Bahn, a fiddly ginger Trill man who seemed to be more leg than what he knew what to do with, was at the door, an elbow on the frame and about 3 centimeters away from slipping off and making him fall face-first into the carpet. “Hey! Ensign T’Mau!” he said quickly, accidentally letting a voice crack out. “Can we chat? Just for a mo?”

Calmyu was at looking over the edge of her bunk at the doorway. “Hey, Mr B,” she said to him with a parted mouth.

“It’s _Lieutenant_ B,” Bahn corrected through his teeth, catching himself from falling forward with a quite ‘merp.’ The two had known each other before he became one, but that admittedly was only a couple of months ago.

“Yes,” T’Mau replied as he joined the communications officer out in the hallway. The two rounded the corner “Is there an issu-“

“Yes! Clearly,” Bahn cut in, stepping before T’Mau. Bahn was even taller than him, but it wasn’t imposing.

T’Mau blinked.

“You keep touching the layout of my station and closing everything that I set up – stop it.”

Both Bahn and T’Mau worked on the ships’ communication station.

T’Mau couldn’t tell if he was speaking more with his hands or face, but was very expressive with both either way. It was like watching an improve actor desperately try and remember his parts of a script after he had already flubbed enough takes to make everybody else on the set really annoyed at him.

“My apologies if I need to make the comms station useable to be able to use it,” T’Mau replied. Bahn was his direct superior, sure, but he was still just Bahn.

Bahn stammered. “I just – I just have a system in place, okay?”

T’Mau was surprised at that, if there really was ‘a system’ in place, he was still to work it out. He had just assumed something had happened to the display. “Does it work?” he asked. 

“That’s aside the point,” Bahn cut again with a snap.

“Didn’t you have a shift like, 20 minutes ago?” A voice chimed in from behind.

Bahn jumped and turned around with a sharp yelp. “Yes sir sorry sir just making my way there now,” he said quickly before running off to the bow of the ship.

“…Through the crew quarters?” the owner of the voice, Lt. Commander Ruh’k, asked quietly as he stood by T’Mau and watched him go. He looked to his side, “You alright?” he asked a just-as-confused officer beside him.

“I do not believe that it is me that you should be concerned over,” T’Mau replied, looking at the space that Bahn had just been in as he had just imagined the whole conversation.

* * *

“Commander on the bridge,” Bahn alerted as doors swooshes open right behind him.

Commander Phoenix arrived his usual couple of minutes early for his shift on the bridge. He was without his jacket, just his Migaloo-branded undershirt with a flower pinned to his chest in a bare-minimum corsage just above his combadge. He and Ruh’k exchanged nods as Ruh’k got off the commander’s chair and took the tactical station by the back. Flowers were a very important part of his culture, and he liked to wear them as much as possible.

Phoenix slid down the banister of the couple of steps needed to get to the front panel. He had a mug of coffee in his hand that he had replicated on the way there and was able to slide without spilling a single drop of.

“How we trackin’?” He asked the helmsman, resting himself on the side of her panel.

“We trackin’,” Loxa Keiro, a blond Betazoid woman in a red uniform, replied in the exact same casual tone of voice.

The Migaloo, their ship, was about a day and a half into fairly empty patch of space, aside from the nebular that I spent all that time talking about just before. The rout that they were following went above and around the nebular and the ship was roughly next to where the ‘yoke’ of the nebular sat. it was pretty irregular in shape.

Phoenix took a sip of his drink. “Your uniform is looking nice, did you replicate a new one?” he asked her.

“Nah, I cleaned it,” Keiro replied. It was distinctively ‘redder’ than the one that she had on the day before.

“Not a good look, Lieutenant,” Phoenix said into his mug with a straight face.

“No, like, hang on,” she backtracked, “I did that thing that Bahn always does.”

“Dry clean?” Bahn asked from his station half a level above everybody else.

She turned around to look at him. “Yeah! that.”

“You don’t dry clean your uniform?” he asked again.

“Nah I usually just put it through the recycler like everybody else in Starfleet does.”

Phoenix went back towards his chair.

Keiro clicked her fingers – “OH – hey, I remember what we were going to talk to you about,” she said.

“Oh?” Phoenix said, still standing up, “Do tell.”

Keiro flicked up something from her display to the main viewscreen. “Here we go,” she leaned back in her chair as she said it, “we got a transmission from a Romulan mining ship from a Captain T'Rehu Mendak a little bit ago, it might be useful.”

Phoenix recognized that name. “’Mendak?’ I used to serve with her son a couple of years back, weird to think that we’ve been pretty much following her this whole time.”

“Yeah! yeah,” Keiro nodded quickly, “Her ship went through this upcoming gap of this nebular a couple of days ago – they said it was a clear path all the way through for a least the next month and sent what they mapped with the transmission.”

“Just as a shortcut that they thought we could use?”

“Looks like it.”

Phoenix ‘um’ed’ for a second, “I don’t know if we’ll be allowed to take it, Lo. It’s not on any routs and our maps of the area...” he paused to find the right word, “rudimentary.”

‘Rudimentary’ wasn’t exactly the word, ‘basic’ or ‘yeah sorry about this, we really don’t know as much as we should,’ worked better. There was actually a full survey of the nebular scheduled to be done later that year, the science vesicle USS Lynemoss was booked in to do it. Phoenix did actually have the full power to take up the shortcut, but as unbelievable as it seemed just by looking at him, he still liked working within set ‘this is where you can take the ship’ rules. It was literally hardwired into the guy.

“C’Mon, it should save us almost half a week. We would be crazy not to try,” Keiro said.

Phoenix paused for a moment has he took in the information on display ran the numbers, “uh, somewhere in the ballpark between 2.934 to 5.523 days if we keep in recommended speed – but that’s not the point.”

“5.523 days,” Keiro repeated.

“Hey! Don’t get make fun at me at that, we’re supposed to be confined by the trade routes just like every other ship in the Federation.”

“’Hey, Federation ship following us, why don’t you go through a little place that gets unironically called a ‘ship graveyard?’ Won’t that be a swell little short-cut among the actual ghost ships that are there that may-or-may-not just be Romulan pirates?’” Bahn commented under his breath in Romulan – but since the universal translator was working nobody knew he had spoken in another language. “Hope you don’t become one~”

“Yeah… I’m going to go with the guy who dry-cleans his uniform on this,” Ruh’k commented.

‘What’s so wrong with that?’ Bahn mined.

Ruh’k put his weight onto the bench next to him. “This feels like we’re living the start of a PSA that you have to watch at the Academy of why this is a bad idea.”

“Guys,” Phoenix said to the two officers behind him. “Every single time we get a transmission like this you do this.”

“It was just a pitch, you two. Stuff moves around a lot in the nebular, it’s a good opportunity for us to take,” Keiro said, clearing the vidscreen and replacing it with the view of empty space zooming by, “And anyways, it’s been years since anybody’ even reported any issues. It’s all _dead_.”

“- Or lived to tell the tale,” Bahn replied, still speaking Romulan.

“Yeah, because the only interesting thing a hundred years around us is this the slip of the trade route that runs around the edge of it,” Keiro said back, “either we can keep going and take it or we can just go right through the bulk of it now.”

“I still think it sounds like a trap,” said Bahn as he read over the message the Romulan ship had sent them. It was pretty much the Romulan equivalent of ‘hey guys, check this out. It might help,’ so it read just like an official statement from a Starfleet Admiral.

“We don’t even really have anything worth that much effort to take,” Phoenix mused as he seemed to do everything in his power not to actually sit on his chair.

There was a small ‘woosh’ of the door to the hallway opening again.

“Hey, T!” Phoenix said as he swiveled his chair around, “what would you say about us taking a shortcut through this nebular? We got some mapping from another ship with a route we could take.”

T’Mau paused. “I do not see how my recommendation should at all affect the course of the ship.”

“It does, ‘cause I’m asking you,” Phoenix replied with that ‘white person’ smile that he does, “Plus saying stuff out load always helps to work out a point that you’re trying to make.”

“And ‘your point’ is?” T’Mau asked.

“Whatcha thinking’?” Phoenix asked again with a ‘c’mon buddy’ smile.

“If it is beneficial to the current assignment,” T’Mau shrugged as he took one of the empty stations next to where Ruh’k was sitting. “Then sure.”

Phoenix swiveled his chair back around. “Alright, ‘sure’s good enough for me. Let’s give it a go.” 

Ruh’k leaned forward as T’Mau sat in the seat before him. “He likes you,” he commented quietly.


	2. Fermented Grape Juice

_Shiplog, stardate: 92530.63._

_The Migaloo is about 8 hours into our journey into the Kayton Nebula with the hopes that it will cut off several days off our expected journey. Nothing else of note to report._

* * *

The late-night shifts were as long as the ones during the ‘day’ hours, but there was always something very quiet to them. With most of the crew either asleep or winding down for the day, those taking their places either having that night spare or being some of the few who worked on a totally different 12-hour schedule to everybody else – the types of coworkers that you only see having dinner when you’re getting your breakfast. This was most of the tiny engineering staff, now that I think about it. 

On the bridge was a few of these crewmembers, since there Always had to be. The journey through the nebular had been a slow one, with navigation being done a lot by hand as the nebular was too dense for clear enough readings to really let them go faster than warp 2. 

Just now, they had encountered one of those things that were forcing them to take their time. It was a ship, far smaller than the Migaloo, but it wasn’t a ship you would have taken lightly if it had approached you with guns blazing. The design didn’t look enough like any of the federation-or-not ships that the bridge crew had ever seen before, and it looked old. It looked old like the first couple of shuttles that you send off into space before your species realizes what it's doing crossed with an old navy frigate. 

It had the vibe like an abandoned mall with the soft glow of neon in some places. It was moving at the same idle speed as the rest of the nebula’s natural orbit. 

Phoenix moved himself up on the commander’s chair so he was sitting on top of his feet. He leaned to the side towards Bahn’s station, “Hail it.”

Bahn was already ahead of him. “No response, sir.”

“And no life-forms detected,” Ensign Calmyu said as she looked back up at the commander from her seat next to the helmsman. She had rolled her dreads in a bun before her sift. 

Phoenix raised one of his sets of eyebrows. “None at all?”

“Minimal life-support seems to be running on auto, but nope,” she replied. “Nobody’s home.” 

“….. huh,” the Commander replied, looking back out the viewscreen. The frigate was moving slowly out of view. 

A good reason that ships like the Migaloo or the Wobbegong were usually confined to their trade routes was because of the innate desire to go and explore things or to get into trouble is very common in almost all species. Thankfully, Phoenix wasn’t at all much of an exploratory type, making him quite a good pick for being in charge of this ship. 

“Let’s put a tag on that and take some scans, we should let somebody more equipped to explore it,” he ordered.

A small probe was launched from the Migaloo and attached itself to the underside of the other ship’s hull. It was a little like a leach or a tracking bug, and acted like one. Another officer on the bridge began to work to see if she could get into the other ship’s computer. The Migaloo wasn’t able to get into anything, if there was any data to get. 

The door ‘swooshed’ open, a non-commissioned officer in a navy jumpsuit walked in. 

“Hey, Ottie,” Phoenix replied to the sound, only half looking away from the window and the alien ship in view. 

‘Ottie’, also known by as Rhode, since that was his name, nodded back, “Even’in.” He wasn’t as occupied with this new discovery as the rest of the bridge crew, he was really just there to quickly knock out a few small jobs and then knock off for the night. Rhode was a Magni-Romani native with a bit of a beard and often looked like he was mentally off somewhere else. He had a spray bottle and a cloth in his hands. 

“Hands up,” Mr Rhode said once he got to the bridge’s front console. 

Calmyu did exactly that, her hands quickly moving up and into her chest. 

“Rhode control lockout C-7 Mactier,” he said in a neutral voice. There was a small beep from the console, and he quickly wiped it down, “6 Paris.” Beep again, and then he moved on to clean down more. 

T’Mau watched him for a little while before speaking up. “What are you doing?”

“Cleaning,” Rhode replied quickly, it wasn’t like he did much else on the ship. 

“…. But why? The ship is regulated from harmful substances, and even the coatings of the screens we work off are anti-microcrobrial.” 

Rhode leaned his hip on the wall, his arms casually crossed. “Well, put it this way: you can have a whole uber-complex system that’s constantly scanning and keeping track of every single living cell on every surface on the ship trying to keep everything as sterile as possible - or you could just spray some bleach and kill it all in one go every once and a while,” he said with a shrug. “There’s no harm in just wiping it down.” 

T’Mau thought for a small moment. “There is logic to that.” 

The bridge was called with a beep from somewhere else on the ship, T’Mau answering it. 

* * *

It was rather a while after their shifts when three of the senior officers found themselves hanging out in one of the nice reception areas in the lower decks, the bar was usually reserved for when something important was going on on the ship. If something important _had_ been happening, they wouldn’t particularly spend their off time there, but right now it was free rein. The mess hall did have it’s own little bar, but this place was a little nicer and they were senior officers, so be quiet. The bar had a nice view of the nebula before the ship and had almost all of it’s tables and chairs stacked along one of the walls, except for a few scattered closer to the replicator from people who didn’t bother putting them back. 

Bahn, Ruh’k, and Keiro were currently there together. All three where in casual clothing, that being:

  * a soft, dark blue button up shirt tucked into that day’s uniform pants, 
  * the fraying top half of a gold and black casual summer Vulcan robe worn like an Earth happi that he could never give a direct story as to where he had gotten it from, over a shirt with a collar low enough to show off a fabric-braided necklace and chest hair,
  * and a loose jumpsuit-like smock that was wrapped around the body with an elastic tie, well-worn tennis shoes and hair down, 



-respectably. It was pretty much almost bedtime for all of them, and you couldn’t blame the three of them too much for cutting some slack. 

Bahn was the type of person who would be able to tell you the year a bottle of wine had been, well, bottled. He had grown up in that ‘upper class’ sort of society (however the hell one like that could still exist, but keep in mind this is still the planet Trill that we’re talking about here,) and oh boy it showed. He was currently behind the bar, looking more comfortable there than he does on the bridge. 

Kerio wasn’t as fussy as the other two men about her drinks, she was mostly there just to watch them interact. Imagine some upper-class ‘merp’ of a man trying his best to be both relatable and approachable vrs an equally upper class assistant manager who refuses to believe that he was anything other than a jock, but they’re your co-workers. 

Ginger eyebrows went up with a smile as three wine glasses were put on the counter. Ruh’k just playfully groaned into the sleeve of his elbow as it happened. 

“It’s a genuine vintage Picard! It’s from the same year as the last owner – _The_ late Admiral Picard got his first command!” Bahn explained excitedly. The bottle in his hand looked like it had either just been replicated or had sat in status this whole time. 

Ruh’k couldn’t really give less of a shit. He rubbed the first invert of his on his forehead at the bridge of his nose, “Look, if I wanted to be around a group of grown adults talking about whether alcohol from grapes picked in 2487 or 2488 is better, then I would have just attended one of my father’s art shows.” 

Bhan ‘tisk’ed’ and poured glasses for both Keiro and himself. 

“Besides,” Ruh’k followed, “wine’s a drink for when you’re eating meat or cheese or something, what else have you got down there?” 

Bahn re-corked the Picard and dipped below the counter, seconds later showing up with something else in his hands that looked even fancier. 

“There are two places in the known Galaxy where you can get this stuff,” Bahn said as he showed it off as if he was trying to sell it, “and that’s either in the valley of Mt Arshaws on the planet Keck, _or another place entirely that also happens to be in the valley of Mt Arshaws_ on the planet Keck.” 

“It’s still all just grape juice,” Ruh’k commented, dark brown eyes unblinking. 

“ _Fermented_ grape juice.”

“That really doesn’t help your argument as much as you think it does.” 

“Well, all you have to do is eat a block of chocolate and you’re set,” Bahn 'tished' again as he gave Ruh’k a sip’s worth of the new drink into Ruh’k glass. “There is an art to this that you’re simply just missing.” 

“Yeah, and it’s great,” Ruh’k replied. He stretched, took the sample like a shot, and then winced because he really shouldn’t have done that, “Right. I’m going to and read reports tucked tightly in my bed with the climate as low as the computer will let me make it for the next six hours, goodnight.” 

“Night,” Keiro said as she saluted him with her already-finished glass. 

Ruh’k turned the corner to the hallway and then locked eyes on. Somebody. Or something. It was hard to decide in the half-second that Ruh’k had to make it. 

They were just… standing in the hallway by an open access panel, clearly not expecting Ruh’k to have appeared. They were taller than Ruh’k with a thin tail and were slightly transparent in the parts of them exposed outside a short jumpsuit of a uniform. It was form-fitting, but it didn’t put pressure on the body – a swimsuit, not a catsuit, that was made up of shorts ending at the knee and a top that was sleeveless with a high collar – excluding gaps around the collarbone to expose some large spots that matched two on it’s cheeks. The Figure was clearly alien, and had long-ish and soft hair-like extensions on their head that came over what Ruh’k assumed to be their eyes like dreadlocks. The ‘hair’ might have reminded somebody of a sheep. 

The alien had a little computer disk in their hand and was half a moment away from plugging it into the ship. It wasn’t holographic-like a PADD, it looked more like a storage disk. 

Both blinked at each other. 

Ruh’k was the first of the two to regain composure. “Oi!” he barked.

The alien scrambled to get out of there, getting a few steps away before they said something into their computer, and beaming away with an old-fashioned glittery effect. 

Ruh’k caught up to where the stranger had beamed away from and just sort of stood there for a short moment, trying to figure out what had happened. 

* * *

The next shot was the same, but now with brighter lighting and more people. 

“No Cellular residue at all, that’s weird,” Keiro said as she closed the hovering displays of a scanner. She had been kneeling by the outlet. 

“They were right _there_ ,” Ruh’k restated with both his arms pointing to ‘there.’ “How could they not leave any cellular trace?”

“Must not have been around long enough to leave any.”

“And they left nothing in the air? Or DNA from their hands or boots? Hardly.” Bahn commented, his thin hands deep in his waistband as if he had a belt on instead. He wasn’t really helping much, but he had heard Ruh’k yell. 

Keiro thought for a moment. “They must have been using some sort of thin force-field to keep their own air in, like the ones that are built into our badges.” 

Ruh’k squinted at her before looking at the others who were present. “Any other ideas?”

Lieutenant Dotip Th'zhaoriss, a light blue Andorian thann with scruffy hair and a scalarly good ability to use pretty much any weapon on him, but never quite had the academic ability to use this skill for evil, thought for a moment. “There should be surveillance memory in the hologram system still, that might at least tell us what they mighta’ looked like.”

“Yes – right, I’ll go and look over that.” Ruh’k went over to a panel to his side and pulled out the display of a single panel, pressed something on it, and then a figure appeared next to him. It looked just like the stranger, but more of a shell of themselves this time. Ruh’k looked at the hologram, a hand on his chin and he studied over what the ship was able to give. “What is that? It doesn’t even look like a mammal.”

Dotip though for a moment, “And I don’t think the ‘mammal’ planet is even in this sector, right?” 

Ruh’k sighed heavily, “No. That’s not a mammal is.” He hit his badge and called the bridge. “Ruh’k to the bridge, do we have any records of unauthorized transports onto or off the ship in the last uh, two minutes?”

There was the typical organic delay in the response. “No sir,” T’Mau’s voice reported, “What is the issue?”

Over on the bridge T’Mau and Phoenix looked at each other. 

“We passed by a ghost ship just now,” the Commander said towards wherever the nearest microphone was. 

“Yep. That would do it,” Ruh’k said with a flat, unsurprisingly disappointed face. “I’ve just seen an alien in the hall trying to gain access to our computers, I don’t think that was a ghost ship.” 

* * *

At another point in the nebular, there was a medium-sized frigate who’s crew were keeping themselves half busy and half extra busy. The crew consisted of a lesser military group, general sailor crew, and scientific crew all working together in close quarters. This was a grand new endeavor for their colony, and all were on the ship knowing that they may never come back alive. 

Towards the middle of the ship was the Sapeiocyte half in charge, a corporal in the same uniform as everybody else, but now with some extra detailing showing rank on one of the shoulders. Their handle was ‘Pelk,’ although they were usually referred to by rank alone. Corporal Pelk was talking to a few more officers of zirs giving standard reports. Pelk kept zir hair tucked under what one might describe as a ‘hat invented by a species that didn’t grow up with direct sunlight,’ mostly because it was one.

The Sapeiocytes, due to being an asexual race, would not have used gendered language or pronouns like what is seen in standard. 

A taller drone approached the group, zir body closed in a bit of a surrender as they danced around in an attempt to get the Corporal’s attention. 

Pelk stopped halfway through a sentence to address the soldier. “ _Can_ I help you?” 

The drone swallowed a bit of digestive fluid, a middle ground in the species between saliva and stomach acid. “Yep.” 

Pelk looked back. “Is it important?”

The drone nodded in panic. “Yep. We need to retreat the whole scavenger team _right now_.”

Pelk didn’t have enough time to respond. 

“The ship’s populated. I saw something on it.”

The corporal simply looked back at them. “…. _I’m_ sorry, what?” 

* * *

Hard cut of the shot again, the location changed to another room on the ship entirelly. It was located by the stern and had a huge double story-high glass window of a view into the open nebular. It would have made a great place for a bar, but at the moment it was full of soft, bean-bag like chairs scattered around. The window looked like it had been put in long after the room itself had been completed. 

One thing that’s important to note about the culture of the Sapeiocytes, or at least this particular culture of them, is a fairly compact and lenient attitude to rank. Your job on the ship was less a ladder of positions to fill and more of a group project that everybody pulled equal weight in. Most of their higher-ups were only there because they had been there long enough to be good at the position and where they were the best and keeping track of others in their area. Doctors, who healed, and nurses, those who looked after young, were exactly the same as their combatant counterparts, they simply did another job. 

The concept that a meeting would have been hosted in a room full of places to ly on and look at the stars was also just as normal to them as doing it in a more proper meeting room. This was just more comfortable and much nicer to be in than a room full of cold tables and chairs, why wouldn’t you do it there? This wasn’t the time for cold and direct military planning, this was a time to try and get an explorer to try and work what zir was worried about, and zir did seem rather worried. 

“I got halfway through gettin’ into the ship’s computer and then this – thing – just showed up in the hallway,” the drone in question, named Malk, the ‘-lk’ sound being very common in names, explained, pacing softly with zir hands around zir body. “It was… freaky.” Malk wasn’t _exactly_ pacing, but was moving around enough to hold everybody's attention. Ze and been the same alien that Ruh’k had seen. 

“’Thing,’ huh?” Pelk said, sitting on the floor with zir back resting on one of the chairs, this conversation taking clear presentence over what they had been dealing with beforehand. 

“I just, I don’t know what they even were,” Malk said with a bit of a grimace, as if zir had somehow failed zir mission. Malk fell onto a beanbag, zir ‘hair’ falling back with their body finally showing what their photoreceptors looked like. Just normal photoreactors, but smaller at the time since they had been in the shade for so long. Zir looked frazzled. “It looked enough like us, and moved on two feet with two arms like us, but it clearly… wasn’t. The Lipid was dark and there was a pattern on it’s forehead, and stuff on their head that looked like it was made of a different material all together.”

“Why didn’t our computers see anything?” another Sapeocyte officer who had been sitting cross-legged on a pillow asked. They were short and had very short ‘hair,’ almost like a buzz or crew cut. “The ship was on, yes, but it didn’t say anything about there somehow still being crew onboard. Aliens don’t usually get this far in one piece.” 

“They could have ways to block scans, they’re easy to falter if you know what to look out for,” Pelk thought out loud. 

“Yeah! But I didn’t think there would be like, legit. Actual. Alive _aliens_ to scan for,” Zir buzzcutted one said, more force to each of the words as zir said them. It was all rather remnant of Lut. Bahn trying to fill out a crossword. 

Standing by the window and just outside of the lighting of the room to have been noticed at first glance, the ship’s head doctor watched on. Ze scrunched up zir face and then spoke in the first gap ze found to speak in. “Do you think our scanners are even strong enough to get their anatomical information?”

The doctor was well experienced in what you or I would call ‘microbiology’, and what they would call ‘biology,’ and had more-or-less taken this job in the slight hope that this exact thing would happen. Still, it was a shock that it had happened so fast. 

“Doub’ it, they’re good enough to track normal life,” Pelk said, “and I doubt that they would let us get close enough to get new scans now. We don’t even know if they would have actual rDNA like we do.”

The doctor turned around with an amused look, “I’m pretty sure that they would, you said that the one you saw was [humanoid;] they would have to have their own mitochondria somewhere.” ‘Doc’ was round in the face and had a row of soft spikes into a tight knit the back of zir head, with the top few loose spiking out due to being too short to be in the braid. Ze was sturdy in stature and was in a slightly different uniform to the others in the room, including zir own ranks on zir shoulder. The doctor was a light teal in colour, with two more short spikes looking a bit like stubby bunny ears on zir head. Everybody had these ear spikes, but because of how short the doctor wore them, they were more evident on them. 

The doctor also spoke with a bit of a ‘Kiwi’ accent; actually, most of them did. Just slight enough in standard that you would notice if you were paying attention to it.

“I dunno,” the Malk replied, holding tight onto zir own pillow, “I couldn’t see anything.” 

The doctor looked back at zir as they walked in close to the conversation. “You only got a glimpse. If we are really dealing with aliens, anything is possible.” 

“I do think it was just a long uniform. It was yellow with a stripe in the middle.”

“That too. Aliens can wear clothing, no reason that they cannot,” The doctor said with a soft shrug. 

“We have no idea what these things are capable of, or their motives,” Pelk said, standing up, “They could be monitoring us right as we speak, and we wouldn’t know until it was too late. The question now becomes ‘what do they want?’”


	3. Ah Yes, First Contact Can Be This.

“What the hell do they want?” Ruh’k asked the air as he stormed onto the bridge, still in his casual ware. In it he looked like he would actually be more at home as a used car or washing machine salesman. Bahn and Keiro followed behind and joined him on the bridge.

Phoenix turned around and half jogged towards him.

“Nothing on the ship,” T’Mau reported to Ruh’k before Phoenix had a chance to say anything.

Ruh’k wasn’t all too happy with that response. “So our ship’ found nothing?”

“Very small amounts of minor alien cellular reduced at some points in the ship only.”

“We’re talking like, one or two cells at best,” Calmyu said, rocking back and forth in her chair, her tail wrapped around her leg, “Its kinda like a ghost ship.”

Ruh’k’s face didn’t change. “I hate this ship.”

Calmyu tried her luck. “From what we’ve been able to remotely extract from its computers, the other ship gives the same sorta readings.”

“Well, I hate _that_ ship, too,” Ruh’k replied with a leer and his hands on his hips.

“Was it anything you’ve seen before? Humanoid? What uniform?” the commander asked, fidgeting with one of the electronic tab coverings on his right arm.

“Kinda like, hmmm,” Ruh’k thought for a moment. “Yaknow that jelly that has the hardish outside layer when you bite into it and it spills all over you? Like that but crossed with a snail and in velour.”

Phoenix did not know what a snail was. “Right, right,” he said while nodding, “either way this isn’t good.” He looked over to the commination station, “Try again, one of them was bound to have reported back something by now.” Phoenix re-tied his hair with a snap of the elastic band and made his way back to his chair as he said it.

* * *

The Sapeiocyte’s ship was even more of a mess, but at least they had the excuse of being inexperienced. Malk, Pelk, and everybody else from the last chapter had too ended up on their bridge. It was split over two layers with an open space in the middle, like what designers usually like to do with the insides of malls, and a vidscreen towards the front. The ship’s main engineering section was right behind it.

The Migaloo was in full view. A little boxy in a modern style, two faintly glowing nacelles at the back making it look a little like a big shuttle, a tri-coloured strip (gold, blue, and red, since it was a Starfleet ship and that was their whole thing) down along both sides that was faded in colour in such a way it looked intentional, and the ship’s name and number written in big bold, friendly letters. The Sapeiocytes couldn’t read the alphabet it was written in, so that information was pretty much useless to them.

One day I’ll actually take the time to actually describe the ship in greater detail, not now is not that time.

Most of the Sapeioctye scouts had been quickly transported back, it didn’t appear as if more had been spotted by the aliens, and all were in good health.

Everybody else there just seemed to be just a little frantic; just a little.

I mean, I guess that was fair.

“Everybody shut up!” Pelk called out as ze entered the bridge. Everybody did and looked at them.

The ship’s radio got another incoming call request. This would normally be fine if they didn’t know that it was coming from the alien ship. What the hell did you do when aliens call you immediately after they catch you trespassing? One of the Sapeiocytes working there looked at Pelk, the button on their console flashing, Pelk again, and then denied it again.

Pelk watched them do this, exhaled, and then went over to another console. “What do we know so far?” Ze asked.

The officer there looked over what couldn’t have been anything better than one of those black and green computer screens from computers from the early 70’s. Like, if this was to be a set that that got made in real life it would be made out of one of those, or at least looked like one. I would write it as a paper readout instead if these people had ever invented paper – it was that old of technology. The whole ship was like this; as basic as you could make it, as if it was made of visions of the future from the 1940s. “What do you want to hear? The life readings aren’t coming up as anything we’ve got data on and it looks like that ship could easily out power, outshoot, and outrun us without an issue.”

Pelk gave a single ‘huh.’ “Yeah, okay. I get why everybody’ freaking out now. Life readings didn’t come in right because they’re too alien?”

“That’s the leading theory, Corp’.”

“…Right.” Pelk whistled to get the bridge’s attention again. “Right! This is the exact moment that this entire mission was meant for - this is our job and this is what we’re out here to do, and if you don’t like that, then you shouldn’t have signed up to be here. Call them back,” Pelk ordered as ze straightening up zir hat, “and if we don’t have any objections to it, I’ll do the call.”

Doc watched the screen and at the little spinning animation that it did when trying to connect to something.

* * *

“Hey - hey we’ve got an incoming signal,” T’Mau said from his station.

“The Aliens?” Phoenix asked, looking up at him.

“Yessir.”

The commander nodded. “Okay, bring em up.”

It was Pelk in the frame, hat and all. Zir where a great deal more imitating now that zir were in full view like this, the camera in use let them almost leer down at Phoenix. Pelk was also resting zir hands on the railing, you could see them react with a concealed surprise as to what the crew of the Migaloo actually was. Alien, very alien.

Both sides looked at each other for a moment or two, taking in what was going on, both waiting for the other to speak. 

Phoenix clearly wasn’t somebody good at these sorts of things, and first contacts with somebody acting hostile to you where the worse. He coughed into his hand and straightened his back in attention, wishing that he had come onto the bridge with his blazer like he was supposed to have done in the first place.

“Hi! - Hello. I am Commander Phoenix of the Federation Starship ‘Migaloo.’” Phoenix always had a strange way of saying ‘Migaloo,’ but it’s hard to transcribe. A bit of a ‘Meg-aloo’ instead of a ‘MIg-aloo,’ like it was meant to be. “That’s this ship that you’re talking too. Who am I speaking too?”

“….Wazat mean?” the alien on the other end of the line asked.

Phoenix didn’t quite know how to respond to that. “Uhm. You. It'd be good to know who _you_ are.”

Pelk’s face scrunched up a little. “Senior Corporal 434-3452 Pelk,” zir said as if giving an order. “What’s your purpose here?”

“We’re a cargo ship,” Phoenix answered, “– and you’re more than welcome to scan our inventory, it’s mostly shuttles and imported timber at the moment. We were simply taking a shortcut through this area since one had opened up – I had no idea that it was populated, and if I did I can assure you that I wouldn’t have come near.”

“Where you the one who drove your ship here?”

“Not directly,” Phoenix paused, starting to get worried that something was going to happen to another member of his crew, “that’s the job of my helmsmen.”

Keiro gave a small wave, Brick Armo, the Bajoian currently at the helmsmen’s station, sunk a little into his chair. He was more or less hoping to go this whole exchange without doing anything more than keeping the ship in place.

“-Then _you_ didn’t come here.” Pelk tisked.

“I – suppose not, but it was on my order and I do take full responsibility for it.”

Pelk ‘…huh’ed after a small pause. What did either of them say now? A declaration of war? War wouldn’t be good, did the other side want war?

Phoenix just grit his teeth, his upper set of eyebrows tensing up a little. “Look, I’m sorry about everything that’s happening. We’ll leave out the same way we came, no more issues,” he said as he took a step forward. He looked like he was about to ask a parent to help with an assignment that was due the next day.

Pelk looked at some of the officers next to them. The doctor was still there, clearly having fun watching this all go down. Doc gave the sapeiocyte equivalent of a thumbs up, a thumbs up, zir way.

“I want data,” Pelk said with an inhale to the other ship. “I want to know who and _what_ you are,” zir’s face and voice got a little softer, “That’s what my people were doing, before. This a research ship first and foremost.”

Phoenix nodded. Softly at first, and then in agreeance. “Okay, yeah, I can vibe with that. We’d be more than happy to give you want if that’s it, and talk further in person, we can even transport you over here. Or just. Send over anything that might be compatible. If there is compatible data.”

Ruh’k let his head rest in his palm. He was not enjoying this as much as Doc was. You could see him do it on the top right corner of the vidscreen.

Pelk thought for a moment.

“- No pressure.”

Zir chest puffed out a little. “No, I think that I will. It would be a lot better than using the phone like this.”

The video was quickly cut on the Sapeiocytes end.

“You’re inviting her _over_?” Ruh’k asked from the tactical station. You could hear a slight grown in his voice.

Phoenix looked back to him and then gave a shrug. “We don’t have anything to hide, do we?”

Bahn made a soft ‘we are going to _die_ ’ sound, but nobody followed up on it.

* * *

The call to the alien ship was ended, Pelk practically deflated on top of the railing. Zir had been able to hold up pretty well up to this point, all things considered.

“You’re going over there?” Doc asked, still by the wall.

Pelk looked back at them and fixed zir hat. “We’ve got nothing to hide, and id rather be on the alien’s good terms than none at all. If they wanted us dead they would have shot us down already.”

* * *

Ruh’k looked at the other man in the turbo lift next to him. There was a buzz in the air that really should get replaced with some muzik at some point. “You are remarkably shit at this sort of thing, aren’t you?”

Phoenix looked to him and then back at the door. “….Yeah.”

“You’ld think-“

“ _You’ld think_ I wouldn’t be, but no.” Phoenix sighed as he rubbed his face, playing again with the malt casing of the implant just under his right eye. The cover was not only to keep the port itself clean, but also made him look neater. It had a nice ‘click’ to it, making it something good to stim with. “My job is to keep the Migaloo on time and everybody tickin’ over, I’ld say this is out of my pay grade but I did sign up for this sort of thing, didn’t I?”

Ruh’k offered him half a shrug. Any other Starfleet commander should have been thrilled to do this, but Ruh’k had gotten stuck under the humanoid equivalent of a PADD’s navigation app. 

“I don’t like first contacts. I don’t even like talking to guests on the ship half the time. First contacts are the worse, everything that could go wrong usually does.”

“Yeah, but only if you fuck it up,” Ruh’k replied.

There was quiet.

“When was the last time that the Migaloo was cited for a first contact like this?” Ruh’k asked.

Phoenix thought for a moment but didn’t get an answer out by the time the turbolift doors opened. It would have been statistically impossible for such an old ship like as this to have not sparked at least a few first contacts in its time – accidental or not – but none of them had been when they had any sort of authority over the ship.

It was a fairly normal transporter room once they got to it, Ensign M’Vev, a cream-coloured Catalian with some trill-like spots down her face (a feature she attributes to being ‘a little bit Trill,’ on her father’s side, or so she claims) was the officer who had been stationed there at the time, but more security had arrived to join them. M’Vev pushed her chair back once Phoenix had gestured that he wanted to do the beaming himself.

M’Vev was part of the ship’s security team, but spent so much of her time either coding or hanging around engineering that she might as well just do those few extra qualifying courses and officially transfer over to it. She wouldn’t even need to get a new uniform, aside from maybe some pants to comply with space-OSHA regulations. M’Vev and Calmyu were also super close friends.

Was there a space-OSHA? I’d sure hope that there was, but with how much blows up on Federation (and sometimes non-Federation) ships I don’t think I’d bet any real money on it.

Ruh’k took his usual guard by the doorway, his hands behind his back holding onto themselves. M’Vev took a space near him, giving a soft smile. Ruh’k rolled his eyes at that.

“Alright, forward them the details,” Phoenix said as he pressed down a button on the console. It took a moment for either T’Mau or Bahn to send back over an ‘all clear’ and for data from a transport request to come through. The data from the other ship looked fine, a bit outdated, but it was all the same tech stripped down.

There was a few moments of the semi-usual transporter static and fizzle, and then a glitch – a big glitch. It was like as if some part of the system just didn’t want to work, or was working a little too well. Pelk could move, but only just. Zir where tense, clearly knowing that something was wrong, almost be transported back, and then practically disintegrated right there and then, loose cytoplasm and everything else inside of them falling all over the transporter’s floor. Everybody else there went dead silent.

This is where any of those hypothetical space-OSHA regulations would have come in super handy. Oh well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think it’s worth bringing up the background detail that Pelk is the only one on their ship with a hat. That’s zir whole entire /thing/ and by god they were going to stick by it.


End file.
